Walnut Chocolate Tart

Locale: China

Source: Barbara Tropp, The China Moon Cookbook [p. 468]

Serves:

Ingredients

Prebaked Tart Shell (one 9-inch):

  • 3 oz (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
  • 1/4 c sugar
  • 2 extra-large egg yolks
  • 1 c all-purpose flour
  • 2 oz semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
  • 1 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
  • 2 c black walnut pieces
  • 2 tbs dark molasses
  • 3/4 c light corn syrup
  • 1/4 c packed dark brown sugar
  • 3 extra-large eggs
  • 1 tsp lemon zest
  • 2 tbs unsalted butter, melted
  • confectioners sugar, for garnish

Steps

  1. To make the tart shell: cream butter and sugar (until smooth, about 4 minutes). Add egg yolks, and mix until smooth. Add flour and mix until blended. Press into a thick disk, and refrigerate until firm (at least 1 hour).

  2. Sprinkle extra flour in board and roll out dough, into an even 1/8-inch-thick circle with a 12-inch diameter. Dust top to keep from sticking. Lift the dough press it into the tart pan, presing the extra into the edges of the pan (it should be twice as thick as the bottom crust). Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

  3. Heat oven to 350F. Cover the shell (but not edges) with a double layer of aluminum foil, and secure with pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and weights, and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes. While doing this, you can toast the walnuts, about 5 minutes.

  4. Mix up the molasses, corn syrup, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and butter. Heat oven to 350F.

  5. Spread the melted chocolate onto the base of the crust. Add walnuts and spread out. Pour the custard mix into the pan. Put the pan onto a larger baking dish or cookie sheet to catch any overflow. Bake 35-40 minutes (until filling is set but soft). Remove to a rack to cool.

  6. If you have leftover chocolate, pipe it for a design on top of the tart. You can garnish with powdered sugar.

Notes

  1. When I made this, I failed to notice that my tart pan was much larger (11 inches). I did feel like I didn't have enough chocolate, so I added 1 oz of semisweet. I was supposed to have extra for the piping, but used all I had. By the time it came out of the oven, I didn't feel like melting more chocolate just for decoration. I didn't garnish it at all.

  2. My crust was very dry, and hard as a rock after refrigerated overnight. I wound up breaking it up by hand, then added more butter (2 tbs), an extra egg yolk, and about 1 tbs half + half, mixing it back together by hand. This was workable, but still erred on the dry side. I didn't refrigerate the dough again. I managed to slip the flat bottom piece of the tart pan under the dough (which otherwise was impossible to handle), and tried to press the sides back together. After the pre-baking, the shell had a number of open fissures around the edges. I had no dough left to attempt a repair. The fissures wound up allowing multiple leaks, so there was quite a bit of burnt sugar around the pan.

  3. I served the tart with vanilla ice cream.

Log

  1. 2025-10-01: